My Memoirs

By J. B. Ivey

J. B. Ivey (1864-1958) belonged to a distinguished list of storekeepers who came to Charlotte at the turn of the century to take advantage of the booming cotton mill economy. He opened a small store room in rented space near the Square on West Trade Street on February 18, 1900, and over the following decades, with Charlotte’s ever-increasing population, J. B. Ivey & Company grew into a big store and rapidly growing business. Ivey’s went on to dominate not only the retail business of uptown Charlotte, but also continued to expand all over North Carolina and down as far as Florida.

This is the biography of North Carolina’s grandest department store magnate himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Dec 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789128178

J. B. Ivey

Joseph Benjamin Ivey (1864-1958) was the founder of Ivey’s (J.B. Ivey & Company), a department store chain based in Charlotte, North Carolina in the early 1900s, which was later acquired by Dillard’s, Inc. in 1990. Born on June 8, 1864 in Shelby, North Carolina, a son of Methodist preacher George Washington Ivey and Selina Rachael Neal, Ivey’s family moved to Denver, where he attended Denver Seminary. During his final year there, he published a penprinted school paper, “The Denver Seminary Gazette,” and went on to contribute numerous pieces to local newspapers and other publications on such topics as polemics, human interest stories, and accounts of his extensive travels. A job at a country store in Belwood, Cleveland County, set Ivey’s career as a merchant in motion. When store owner Capt. L. J. Hoyle offered him a half partnership in 1885, Ivey successfully introduced new methods of merchandising to draw the crowds, such as employing a brass band, a hot-air balloon ascension, and displaying merchandise on tables outdoors. He opened his very own small store in Charlotte in 1900 and bought another business at 13 West Trade Street at the end of that year, moving his store there. In 1914 he moved to 13-15 North Tryon Street, and another move was made in 1924 to the southwestern corner of North Tryon and Fifth streets. By 1940-1941, when the building was enlarged as far as Church Street, J. B. Ivey & Company had become the leading store in Charlotte for quality merchandise. Ivey’s first marriage was to Emma Gantt, who died in 1917. The couple had four children: George, Emma, Ella, and Katherine. His second wife was Daisy Smith. Ivey was an active member of the Methodist church throughout his life. He was president of the North Carolina Sunday School Association for a number of years he was, and financially supported a variety of religious and cultural programs. Ivey died on April 4, 1958, two months shy of his 94th birthday.

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Text originally published in 1941 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MY MEMOIRS

BY

J. B. IVEY

TABLE OF CONTENT

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENT 5

DEDICATION 6

INTRODUCTION 7

FIRST THINGS 8

FOUR YEARS AT LENOIR 19

FOUR YEARS AT DENVER 33

STARTING TO LEARN THE CARPENTER’S TRADE 52

I START TO LEARN THE MERCANTILE BUSINESS AT BELWOOD, N.C. 56

I RETURN TO BELWOOD AS PARTNER, GET MARRIED AND MOVE TO HENRIETTA 82

I MOVE TO CHARLOTTE AND LAUNCH OUT FOR MYSELF 112

MY EXPERIENCES IN CHURCH WORK 126

ABOUT AUTOMOBILES 132

VARIOUS INCIDENTS FROM ABOUT 1919 TO 1939 139

WORLD WAR NUMBER ONE 144

THE UNIFICATION OF THREE METHODIST CHURCHES 148

ON GETTING OLD 156

GENEALOGICAL CHAPTER 163

APPENDIX 166

I—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII 1929 166

II—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 169

III—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 175

IV—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 180

V—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 184

VI—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 188

VII—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 192

VIII—OUR TRIP TO PANAMA, LOS ANGELES AND HAWAII, 1929 197

IX—OUR RETURN TRIP FROM HAWAII 201

I—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 206

II—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 209

III—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 213

IV—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 216

V—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 220

VI—OUR EUROPEAN TRIP 224

COPY OF LETTER ABOUT PARIS LETTER 228

A TYPICAL DAY IN IVEY’S, 13 WEST TRADE STREET, ABOUT 1900 229

COPY OF HOME NEWS DESCRIBING A VISIT TO CHARLESTON ABOUT 1930 231

DISTRICT CONFERENCE AT KADESH CHURCH 234

COPY OF HOME NEWS DESCRIBING A VISIT TO NATIONAL FLOWER SHOW AT ATLANTIC CITY SEPTEMBER, 1930 237

ARTICLE IN THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, JUNE 19, 1932 240

J. В. IVEY AND MRS. IVEY ATTEND CHURCH IN NEW YORK 243

FLORIDA 245

FROM THE YOSEMITE TO SAN DIEGO AND THE EXPOSITION 249

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 259

OUR VISIT TO ALASKA 263

AN EDITORIAL IN THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 1932 268

A VISIT TO THE FLOWER SHOW AT PHILADELPHIA 269

IMPERIAL VALLEY—WESTMORELAND, CALIFORNIA 273

VISIT TO THE WORLD’S FAIR, 1939 279

AIRPLANE TRIP TO CALIFORNIA—FEBRUARY, 1941 284

TRIP TO BOULDER DAM, BOULDER, NEVADA—MARCH, 1941 288

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 292

DEDICATION

TO MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY AND TO THOSE WHO COME AFTER I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE HISTORY WITH A HOPE THAT IT MAY PROVE A PLEASANT RECITAL OF MY JOYS AND SORROWS, SUCCESSES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS, AND THAT IT MAY BE AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE GENERATIONS THAT ARE TO COME

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT 1918, I had a secretary who kept insisting that I write my memoirs and publish them. I told her that I didn’t think any publisher would want it, but she kept talking about it and at last I became interested and decided to write my recollections of my early years for the benefit of my family.

I dictated several chapters to this secretary and then when Daisy and I made a trip to Miami in February of 1922, I engaged a stenographer and dictated further memoirs to her. I brought my history up to the time I moved to Charlotte in 1900, making about 200 pages of typewritten matter.

Here the subject rested for years, until 1938, when Virginia insisted that I bring my memoirs up to date, publish in a book and give it to my children as a Christmas present. During the summer of 1939, I commenced the work again, intending to publish and give it to my family as Christmas presents in 1939. I found it a larger job than I anticipated, and did not get it finished in time.

I think the events of my life up to 1900 are fairly in chronological order, and are more in detail than my writings last year and this. I am afraid the records of the last forty years are rather sketchy, and are not as full as the earlier accounts. I suppose this is because as we grow older we recollect much better the things that happened years ago than those that occurred only recently.

I decided to have one thousand published, and present them not only to my family, but to my friends and my employees in the stores of Charlotte, Asheville and Greenville, S. C. I consider these employees very much as members of the family and thought they might be interested in my early struggles and the building of a successful business in which they have had such a large part.

In the appendix, I have placed many accounts of my trips to various places. Most of these are reprints from articles in The Charlotte Observer.

FIRST THINGS

ON JUNE 8, 1864, the writer of this book was born in Shelby, North Carolina, son of Rev. George W. and Selina Neal Ivey. I was the fifth child in a Methodist parsonage. My next older sister died in infancy, so that I was really the fourth living child. It was just about a year before the close of the great Civil War and the lot of a Methodist preacher and his wife with four small children was not an easy one. The country had been stripped of almost everything and the people, while willing, could not aid much in the support of their preacher.

My father, however, was a very fine manager and contrived to get along. Dr. Andrews of Shelby told me an incident in my father’s life that gives some insight into his industry and efficiency.

There was a man living in Shelby at that time who thought that all preachers were lazy and were preaching only to escape work. He was clearing a woods lot a few miles from town and told my father that he could have all the wood he could haul in one day. Dr. Andrews said—and the story was later corroborated by my father—that my father had a big, strong mule. He borrowed another strong mule and a two-horse wagon from one of his parishioners and started to work at daylight and he hauled away in that one day nearly all the wood the man had. The doubter had no further reason to think that this particular preacher was lazy.

During the time we lived at Shelby there were numerous raids and rumors of raids of the Yankee cavalry who swept through the country taking horses and anything eatable. I have heard that it was common practice when they expected one of these raids, for the people to bury their valuables, together with the hams, etc., in the ground. I heard my mother speak of father’s hiding his mule in a little smoke house on the lot. (If the present generation does not know what a smoke house is: it was a necessary adjunct to every house and was used to smoke fresh meats to cure them and to keep the flies away. A smudge fire of oak or hickory chips was built on the ground inside the smoke house, making a dense smoke. Almost every family had a smoke house.)

My father was appointed to the Lenoir circuit and moved from Shelby in the fall of 1865 when I was a little over one year old. I can’t say that I recall any of the details of this moving or anything that happened at Shelby, but I do think that I remember when I was two or three years old at Lenoir. Boys and girls alike wore dresses in those days until they were five or six years old, and I have a faint recollection of going with my mother to a trunk where she got out a fresh dress and put it on me.

I do recollect clearly a total eclipse of the sun in August, 1869, when I was five years old. I can remember the older members of my family using smoked glasses to see the approach of the moon over the sun. I also recollect seeing the chickens going to roost. I was too young to be alarmed, but we heard that the negroes and ignorant white people got very much scared, thinking that the end of the world had come.

One of the pleasant recollections of this period was that of seeing a Christmas tree at Davenport Female College, which was then being conducted by Dr. Samuel Lander, a very fine type of Christian minister and college president. He took great pride in dressing up fancy Christmas trees. He had the floor under this tree fixed like a snow scene, with mountains and valleys covered with snow, and lakes with toy ducks swimming on them. Forty years later I remembered this and fixed a Christmas tree on this order myself, which seemed to be much appreciated by my children.

In the fall of 1869 my father was transferred to the Morgan ton Circuit. Moving in those days was a big job, as the roads were fearful and we had to depend, of course, upon horses and wagons. My father had a parishioner and a friend, a Mr. Hoover, who lived in the south-eastern part of Caldwell County, who generally moved us. This man had a big covered wagon, the cover of which extended two or three feet over the front and rear. The distance between Morganton and Lenoir is only about fifteen miles and can now be made in less than half an hour over a splendid road. The trip then took us two days. We could not go the nearest route—I suppose on account of the bridge over the Catawba River being washed away—so we had to go by way of Lovelady Ferry, which is on the Catawba River near Rutherford College.

The weather was terribly cold and my mother had us all wrapped up very carefully and stowed away among blankets and quilts inside the covered wagon. My father and mother and the baby went in a one-horse hack. This hack was used by my father in traveling over his circuit, as most of his pay—or, as it was called then, quarterage—was paid in produce, and unless he could take it back home with him he would have missed this. We always seemed to have plenty to eat, though money was very, very scarce.

On this trip moving from Lenoir, not only was the weather terribly cold, but the roads were very bad. They had been frozen, and in the thawed places our wagon would frequently sink down to the axles; then it would be a job for the wagoner to get out, pry the wheels out of the mud, and whip the horses to get them to pull us out. Sometimes we would have to wait for a friendly fellow-wagoner to come along, take out his team and hitch to the tongue of our wagon, and the four mules could generally do the work.

We got down to the Catawba River before dark and the impression of that vast river, it seemed to me, as we crossed on a flat boat, was like looking at the ocean. Uncle Dan’l Johnson, my uncle by marriage, knew of our coming and was down at the ferry to superintend the navigation of the flat boat and to welcome us. We had a very hearty welcome at his home, which was right on the river near the ferry. They had a splendid meal prepared for us, including fresh fish from the river. Uncle Dan’l had a fish trap on the river and seemed always to have fish for the table. I do not remember any of the trip next day, or anything about arriving at Morganton.

Going to school was quite a problem in those days, for the public school system was a farce. Public schools were not open but two or three months in the year. I remember clearly the first one I attended in Morganton when I was about seven years old. For some reason—I don’t know why, unless most of the school houses were situated in old fields—all the public schools in those days were known as Old Field Schools. The public school house that I remember was typical of that day. It was a small frame house of one room and with only one teacher. We sat on benches with no desks and Webster’s Blue Back Spelling Book was the only book I recall.

This teacher’s favorite method of enforcing discipline was to take by the ears two boys or girls who had been disturbers and knock their heads together. When I told my mother about being constantly subjected to this kind of punishment, she was alarmed and took me out of this school, and sent me to a private school taught in her own home by Mrs. Gettys, one of the ladies in the town. About the only thing I can remember about this school was that I would get very sleepy in the afternoons and would crawl up on the stair steps where the teacher could not see me and take a nap.

Later I went to another private school taught by Miss Maria Cousins. As I remember it, she was a good teacher for those days. She kindly enforced her discipline and gained the love of her pupils and I began slowly to progress in my Blue Back Spelling Book. I was very slow in developing. At six or seven years old I could hardly be understood by anyone who was not accustomed to hearing me speak. I must have been a little tongue tied.

While at Morganton I took my first trip on a train. The Western North Carolina Railroad, at that time, had its terminus at Old Fort. Our Sunday School arranged to have an excursion to the end of the railroad, and I was very much excited and much awed at getting on this magnificent train. I had seen the train come in before, but this was the first time I had the proud consciousness of being a passenger. None of the large, palatial coaches that I have ridden in since seems to me nearly so fine as this small wooden one. The seats had no cushions and the backs were only about fifteen inches high. The windows were very small, I think only twelve inches square, and I suppose the length of the coaches was about one-third the length of the present fine ones that go over this same road. I remember we had brought our picnic dinner and I enjoyed eating it at Old Fort.

After the dinner—we never called any meal lunch—I went with some of the older children to see the place where some men were working on a tunnel through the mountains. This was the first tunnel of the many that were made through the Swannanoa Gap. The State was building this road and as there was very little money for this purpose progress was slow.

I went to my first Sunday School here at Morganton, though I don’t recollect anything about the teacher. She must not have been a very good one or she would have left an impress on my young mind. I do recall that I was quite a baby and cried at the strangeness of the situation and my father was very much disgusted with me. It seems strange to think of a boy about six years old crying when he was with his own family at Sunday School. I think that I have always been from three to ten years younger than my age.

My father very often took some of his children with him as he went over the country preaching. I think probably this was to relieve my mother, who usually had a new baby to look after, as well as the other small children, and it was a relief to her to have him take some of us with him. I must have embarrassed my father by breaking out crying on some of these occasions, for I remember at one time when I was going with him to one of these country churches he warned me before we got there that if I cried he would have to whip me afterwards. I think this broke up my penchant for crying, as I don’t recollect any further transgressions.

When I was about six years old I visited my Uncle Tom Parks, who married my mother’s sister, Lou Neal. They lived eight or ten miles from Morganton, right at the foot of Table Rock Mountain. Wild deer were in abundance throughout the mountains in those days and deer meat was more plentiful than beef.

My uncle had a large field of clay peas, as we called them, and he offered to pay me for gathering the long pods for him. This is my first recollection of earning money. My uncle did not have any cash when I got through the job and promised to pay me when he sold the peas. I remember I had a hard time collecting for this work and every time I would see Uncle Tom I would dun him, until my father told me I must not speak to him about it again. I think he eventually paid me.

The first funeral that I remember attending was in the old church yard at Morganton. It was a Masonic funeral and I was much impressed with the solemn march of the men in their sheepskin aprons, spears, etc., and I looked on with great awe as they surrounded the grave and went through their Masonic ceremony. I would almost have been willing to have been buried myself then to get such an honor.

When I was about seven years old, there was a big wedding in town and my father was the officiating minister. Mr. Walter Brem, a dashing, handsome young man from Charlotte, had wooed and won the daughter of Todd R. Caldwell, who at that time was Governor of North Carolina. It was a marriage in high society and I remember going to the church and seeing the crowd at the ceremony. It was an early morning affair and the party left at once on the train for Charlotte. Mr. Brem told me later that the train was held for them one hour and that it took all day to go from Morganton to Charlotte. There was no connection at Statesville for Charlotte, so he hired a special train to take them to their destination.

In the front yard at our home in Morganton we had two fine plum trees. We small boys tried to see to it that none of the plums ever got ripe. As soon as they commenced turning red we would knock them down and try to eat them. At last my father told me that we must not knock down any more plums. The next day I was looking up longingly at a plum that I was sure was ripe, and had picked up a stick to throw at it when my father appeared on the scene. I rather think I was punished for breaking his prohibition. It seems to me that I was hungry all the time, though I know we had plenty to eat. We had a lot of peach trees on the place and one red, meaty kind we called an Indian Peach was a special favorite of mine.

About this time I saw my first Indian. Some white men were carrying an Indian over the country, using a covered hack to take him from place to place so nobody could see him. They exhibited him in the courthouse where they charged admission to see him and hear him speak. I did not have the necessary admission price, but I hung around outside and caught glimpses of him as he came in. Later, all of us had a good chance to see this Indian, as he brought his bow and arrow and gave an archery exhibit in a vacant lot near the courthouse. He would ask the men to put up a target on a stick and he would shoot at it. He would miss some of the pennies and nickels, but I noticed that he always hit the quarters or larger money. He got the money if he hit it.

This courthouse square was also the scene of the performance of a wonderful rope walker. A man stretched a rope between the Walton Hotel and the top of another two-story building across the street and, with a pole, he did what looked impossible—walked from one building to the other on this rope. When he did this same thing with his feet in a bag, we held our breath expecting every second to see him fall. For weeks after that all the small boys were practicing walking the top rails of fences.

It seems to me that the winters in those days were much more severe than they are now. I remember the snow lying for weeks on the ground, as is seems to me, and I also remember the long icicles, twelve to eighteen inches in length, hanging from the eaves of the houses.

There was quite an excitement among us small boys when we heard that a mill dam was to be built right in town. We watched this undertaking with bated breath and it caused as much excitement among us as if it had been the digging of the Panama Canal. As I look over the place now, I realize it must have been a very small, dirty pond, but to my youthful mind it seemed immense, and I was fully convinced that one of the older boys was the greatest swimmer in the world when he swam across it. My mother would not let me go in this dangerous lake, but we had a swimming hole right below the dam that we used almost every day during the summer. There was a corn mill, also a small saw mill run by the waters of this dam, and I first saw shingles made there.

The larger saw would cut off slabs the width of a shingle. They would then be sawed the length of the shingles, then the shingles would be ripped off with a smaller circular saw. This was a slow process and the shingles must not have been very popular, for the mill did not last very long. Other than these sawed shingles all the covering of the houses was of shingles made by hand. They were cut out of easy-splitting pine or oak and then put in a vise, and with a drawing knife were shaved down at one end to a thin edge and smoothed all over. Shingles were usually made on the spot where the house was to be built.

A great catastrophe happened at this time. A long-continued heavy rain came and one morning when we woke up we were told that Wilson’s mill dam had broken during the night and all the water was gone. We hurried down to the scene and the Johnstown flood did not seem to those people to be more disastrous than this flood seemed to us. The dam was not repaired while we lived at Morganton, but many years later when the State Hospital was built they reconstructed this lake for the benefit of the patients. It must have proved unhealthful, for later they did away with it.

It is strange how evil thoughts stick in our minds to the exclusion of good ones. When I was about six or seven years old, at Morganton, I was with a crowd of small boys and an older man, who ought to have been lynched, told us a very smutty story. I have not been able to banish that story from my mind to this day.

At Morganton we used candles altogether for light, and my mother had a mould in which she made her own candles from beef tallow. The wicks sometimes would not burn well and would swell up to great black lumps in the flames. Candle snuffers were household necessities and we had several of them.

About this time we got our first coal oil lamp. It was a small brass fount with a round wick about a quarter of an inch in diameter, with no chimney. This made a much brighter light than candles, but was a great thing to smell and to blacken up the walls with its smoke. Later glass lamps, with flat wicks and glass chimneys came in, which were a big improvement. Then the so-called student lamp was invented, with large circular wicks, and the combustion in this was so much better that everybody tried to get a student lamp. Washing the lamp chimneys was a daily job for my sisters. It was considered quite a disgrace to have a smoked chimney, but they got black every night all the same.

There was a kindly old physician, a bachelor, by the way, who had his office near the parsonage. He was fond of children and one day announced that he was going to have a contest, with prizes of sticks of candy for the boys who could throw best. All the boys in the town were there at the appointed time and as one would hit the mark with a rock, Dr. Happolt would praise him and hand him a stick of candy. I was a very poor marksman and although I tried again and again, I could not hit the target. The fount of my tears was loosened. Dr. Happolt was sorry for me and allowed me to come nearer and nearer to the target until I hit the mark and got my candy. I shall always have fond recollections of the good old doctor.

When we first came to Morganton there was a garrison of Yankee soldiers there to keep peace, I suppose, and to prevent the wrong people from voting at the elections. I think it was Grant who rejoiced the hearts of all the people when he called the soldiers away from Morganton. Everyone intensely hated these Yankee soldiers.

Morganton was the only place I lived where there were open saloons. We children were warned never to walk on the side of the street where the saloon was, but as it was right on the way from our house to town, even though we walked on the other side of the street we could see a crowd of drunken loafers around the doors of the saloon, and, once in a while, a man reeling out almost past going. Lenoir, being a school town, never did have saloons, in my recollection.

I think probably it was while we lived at Lenoir that I made my first visit to my grandparents, who lived up near Marion. This was always an event in our lives. I was sent up there when one of the babies came, to be taken care of by my Aunt Harriet. Aunt Harriet was a fine aunt. She looked after us very carefully and did not fail to administer discipline when we needed it. Her favorite method of punishment (now looked upon with horror by child specialists) was to put us in a dark closet under the staircase when we had been bad. One time when we were living at Morganton, mother and the younger children had been to Grandma’s. When they came back sister Emma had her head tied up and mother told us that a dog had bitten her right above the eye. It was a very bad wound and the scar can be seen to this day. We did not know anything about hydrophobia then and were not concerned about that.

Aunt Harriet was a typical spinster, a fine, kindly soul, and one who was always welcome when she came to visit us. She had many chances to get married when she was a young woman, but for some reason she turned them down. In later years, though, she advised my older sister, Clara, to get married to any decent man rather than remain single the way she had.

While we were living at Morganton and I was about six years old, I made a trip with my father to his old home in Stanly County. We drove through the country with his horse and buggy, and as I remember, it took us three days to make the trip. We stopped the last night in Concord and then went to my grandfather’s home the next day.

One of my aunts was a good weaver. She had a large homemade loom set up at one side of the living room and there she made the jeans-cloth for the clothes of the men, and also wove the cotton homespun for the women’s clothes. They themselves would spin the cotton and wool and all the cloth was made from the raw material grown on the farm. Later the cotton chain was bought at stores in five-pound bundles of about ten hanks, and this very much simplified the work of the home weavers. Later, when I was in the country store at Belwood we bought hundreds of yards of this home-made jeans and homespun from the women of the surrounding farms and sold it instead of the factory made cloths later used. Homemade jeans, as it was called, was a very strong, tough-wearing cloth, and for fifty cents a yard one could buy yard wide all-wool-filling jeans. A suit made of this jeans, with an extra pair of pants, would last for several years.

On this trip to my grandfather’s I first saw cotton growing. It was in the fall and the fields were white with opening cotton, and great piles of it that looked like banks of snow were heaped on the porches waiting to be taken to the gin. I was much interested in the cotton presses, their arms 20 to 30 feet long, to which were hitched mules to operate the press. A great wooden screw was turned by these projecting arms and exerted immense force on the cotton put in the box-like enclosure for baling. After the screw was run down and the cotton compressed to the proper size for a bale, the side boards were taken off, iron ties were put around the bale to hold it when the screw was released, and the mules were again hitched to the long arms and driven in the opposite direction to raise the screw. It was a very picturesque sight—this old-time cotton gin—but these presses are never seen any more, as the modern power presses have put them out of use.

I had a good time playing with some colored children who lived on the place, and I remember going with the family over to Zoar Church to hear my father preach. In 1925, fifty-one years later, I was at Albemarle at a Sunday School convention and one of my cousins took me down to the old home place, the first time I had been there since my childhood days. The house had shrunk wonderfully, and did not seem to be more than half the size I remembered it, though they assured me it was the identical house in which my father was born and reared. I went over to where Zoar Church used to be and found my grandfather’s and grandmother’s graves in the old graveyard, which had been allowed to grow up in trees and brambles, and was in a generally dilapidated condition.

As our automobile drove up to the old house, we hallooed but had difficulty in finding anyone. At last two women appeared and when my cousin asked where Jim was, one of them said he had gone to the watermelon patch. Later Jim and a companion appeared and when they found out who we were, were quite friendly and showed us around the place. Jim was a renter on the place and no relation of ours. After we left, my cousin told me that Jim had a reputation of being a bootlegger, and no doubt he hid out when he saw us coming, suspecting us of being revenue officers. We had been in some danger of being greeted with a rifle shot, and I would not have been so easy in my mind had I known more about Jim before we went.

FOUR YEARS AT LENOIR

IN THE FALL of 1872 my father was again appointed by the Conference to the Lenoir circuit. Father’s faithful friend of the covered wagon, Mr. Hoover, was called on and he came over to Morganton for us. The bridge over the Catawba near Morganton was in use at this time and we made the trip in one day.

I do not seem to remember as much about this move as the one three years before—probably because we did not have any romantic crossing of the Catawba in a flat boat, did not stay all night with any hospitable Uncle Dan’l, and the roads must have been better. A committee of citizens was at the parsonage to welcome us when we arrived. They had good fires made and hot supper ready, which we must have enjoyed. The parsonage then was a small four-room house with a kitchen and dining room attached by an ell. It was originally a log house, but had been weatherboarded, leaving fine cavities for the mice and rats to occupy. There was a large lot attached to this house, on which we had an orchard that bore very ordinary apples. My father always had a large garden, which he attended with great care and success. His was always the best garden in the neighborhood. In the orchard one of the apple trees had its trunk covered with poison oak vines. Some boy friends and I decided that we would rid this tree of the poison oak. After cutting it off with great glee and handling it a lot, we capped the climax by going to a wash basin and washing our hands and faces. In a few days I had a wonderful case of poisoning. It spread all over my body. My face was one mass of itching swelling and my eyes were so swollen that I could not see. I had so spread it by washing that I had as thorough a case of poisoning as I ever saw or felt.

For several years after that, about the same time of the year, I would have an attack of this poisoning though each year it was less severe than the year before. Whether this breaking out was a recurrence of the same old trouble or whether I was again infected by passing near some poison oak, I could not tell. I have always been very susceptible to poison oak and even yet I am most careful not to touch or come near any of this noxious vine.

Dr. A. A. Scroggs, one of the ugliest men I ever remember, but also one of the kindliest and finest, was my physician. The doctors didn’t seem to know much about treating poison oak. Dr. Scroggs, like the others, prescribed bathing with a solution of sugar of lead, and I think this has never done me any good. Someone at Lake Junaluska, about 1910, recommended a prescription which I tried, and I found that it dried up the poison in a few days. I have always kept this on hand and have given it to a great many who have been poisoned, and I think it has always acted well with everyone who tried it. Dr. George R. Stuart, the evangelist, who had a home at Lake Junaluska, had a very bad case of poisoning and used everything without much relief. He finally tried my prescription and obtained relief so promptly that he enthusiastically said he was going to get a jug full to give some to everybody who was poisoned.

Hattie and Emma, my sisters, were jealous of the fact that I could stay at home from school while poisoned and they decided they would infect themselves, so they went down to the orchard, rubbed their hands and faces with the leaves of the poison oak with all of the success for which they could wish. They had wonderful cases of poisoning but I think they concluded that they paid too high a price for their absence from school.

But to get back to Lenoir: We were put in school at once, as day pupils, at Davenport Female College. There was a preparatory department, taught by Mrs. McLeod, where they took boys and girls up to ten years old. My sister, Hattie, and I went to this department. Both of us got into trouble frequently at school and took great pleasure in telling the family about the other being punished. We usually got a whipping, or at least a severe scolding, from our parents when they heard about our misbehavior and this finally resulted in our making a treaty of peace and agreeing not to tell on each other when we got in trouble at school.

It seems that I was always getting into some sort of mischief and I think most of my punishment was deserved. I do not recall that Mrs. McLeod ever punished me without due cause, and I think I never cherished any ill will against her. One time, however, I thought I was punished unjustly. Dr. W. M. Robey was president of the college at that time and one of his boys, Charlie, I think, told me that there was a stray cat sucking eggs in the hens’ nests and his mother would like for us to do away with the cat. I think it very unlikely that Mrs. Robey really asked us to kill the cat, but we thought that she did. Four or five of us found the cat and several of the boys pelted it with rocks. The poor thing was writhing in agony and I was so sorry for it that I picked up my first rock and tried to end its misery. I was too tender-hearted to have wanted to hurt the cat but, like poor dog Tray, I was in bad company. We were all hauled up by Mrs. MacLeod, who thought this too serious a matter for her to handle. She sent us to Dr. Robey who didn’t waste much time in giving the accused benefit of counsel but proceeded at once to give us all a sound thrashing. I remember that one of the boys burst out crying as soon as Dr. Robey began to whip him, thereby losing the respect of the rest of us who stoically endured our whippings without a whimper. I always thought that Dr. Robey ought to have investigated this a little more, and I did feel I did not deserve any whipping.

Dr. Robey’s office was in the laboratory. He had a few instruments in there which were very interesting to me. One was a glass disc, which, on being turned, produced static electricity, and if a girl stood on the insulated stand connected with this electrical machine, her body would become electrified and her hair stand out straight. In this day we are trying to get rid of static but then it was an interesting experiment.

There were dormitories in the college building and quarters for forty or fifty girls. They came from all over the State. There were no water works then and all the water had to be carried from a well in a valley back of the hill on which the college was built. The annual commencement was a great occasion. Practically everyone in the town attended and they filled the college auditorium to hear the sermon and addresses. I remember the father of one of the girls, Julia, was a Mr. Bowden from Wilmington. He came to commencement, showing a wonderful expanse of white vest on which he wore a huge gold watch chain which, in my recollection, seems to have been about the size of a log chain.

The college was a beautiful building, on the highest point in the town of Lenoir. From the front we had a magnificent view of Grandfather and Table Rock Mountains and at the rear Hibriten Mountain stood up like a sentinel only four or five miles from the college. It was a favorite tramp on Saturdays to walk to this mountain and climb to the top, where a very fine view could be obtained, as there were no other mountains within fifteen or twenty miles. There was a large telescope at the college, used by the astronomy class, and sometimes the prep scholars, as we were called, were allowed to look through this telescope. I remember one day when there was a group going to the mountain we looked through the telescope and saw the members of the party climbing the mountain. I really think I saw them but it may have been a fancy.

There was a very cold spring at the bottom of this mountain, at the point where we started to climb, and about half way up was a most interesting cave. You had to get down on all fours and crawl in, but after getting through this opening you came into a fairly good-sized room where you could stand up and walk with ease. There were openings into other chambers but I was too timid to explore further than one or two, especially after one day when we went into this cave and found a bed of tips of cedars which we concluded was made by a bear. We got out in a hurry, afraid she would come back and find us occupying her home. Bears were plentiful through the mountains in those days and the natives frequently brought cubs down to Lenoir to display and try to sell. Bear meat was more or less common also.

The long incline from the college down to the street was a great place to coast when snow was on the ground. Homemade sleds were the only ones used but they would go down the steep hill with great speed and when the snow was well covered with ice, we could ride from the top of the hill to the principal street in town, a distance of three or four blocks.

I think I made very poor progress in school, as I did not desire to do anything except play and have a good time. I was a little awakened once when one of the boys told me that he overheard Mrs. McLeod talking to Dr. Robey about me. She told him that I was not doing well, but that I was smart enough and could learn if I wanted to. This rather touched my pride and I tried to get along better after that.

I had a hard time learning the multiplication table and never did learn it until I discovered the principle. I had a bad case of measles when I was nine or ten years old and my eyes hurt so that I spent a lot of my time sitting in a dark closet. While in there I made the interesting discovery that if two times four is eight, that three times four would be another four added on to the eight, and that multiplication was only addition. I was good at mental addition so I soon had the multiplication table down in fine shape. The measles injured my eyes and I have had a bad case of myopia, or near-sightedness, ever since.

While I was in the prep school at the college we were invited one day to a showing of a new picture at an artist’s studio. The artist was Rev. J. A. Oertel, a native of Bavaria. He had been in this country for a number of years and had achieved fame as the painter of the now famous picture, Rock of Ages. It has been